Belfast Confetti - CCEALanguage and imagery

The poem is about how the confusion of the riot causes psychological confusion in the mind of the poet.

How can he respond to this chaos?

His feelings are expressed in the language and imagery, as well as the form.

Title

For example, the title creates a striking poetic image - the soft alliteration of 'f' is appropriate to the idea of a wedding celebration.

In fact it is the sound of a bomb about to go off. The kind of confetti Carson is referring to is the debris falling after an explosion.

Unpoetic words

The poetic language is also pushed out by harsh, unpoetic words. These are presented in simple lists to express their lack of emotional associations. For example, “Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys”.

Street names

Carson also lists street names in the second stanza.

These work on a literal level - they describe where he lives and how well he knows these streets.

They also work as metaphors. The streets are named after generals, battles and places from the Crimean War - a conflict between Britain and Russia in Victorian times. He therefore likens the riot to a battle in a bigger war.

Punctuation

In society we often find that violence is used when spoken communication has broken down. Therefore, Carson cannot complete a sentence as communication is broken in his society.

All he can think of is punctuation marks when there are no words to punctuate, no communication to be had.

Sound

The feeling of the poem is too unstable for the poet to carefully craft rhymes. But there are two key sounds we can hear:

• the 'f' of the title
• the 'k' of the cracking of the social order, of the bomb and of the riot-policemen's truncheons